Pierluigi Paganini December 25, 2015

The Phantom Squad started the attacks on the PlayStation Network and the EA (Electronic Arts) as announced a few days ago.

Last year hackers belonging to the hacking group of the Lizard Squad tool down at Christmas the online networks of both Microsoft Xbox Live and PlayStation network (PSN) highlighting security issues affecting the services of Sony and Microsoft.

This year another group known as Phantom Squad announced its intention to ruin Christmas for gamers. Phantom Squad also said that both platforms are vulnerable to attacks, and they add that they were able to take down Xbox live during the weekend.

The group launched small DDoS attacks on both Xbox Live and PSN causing short downtimes. In the last days, other groups announced their support. Hacking crews of VandaSec and PhantomSec also announced their support for the attack planned by Phantom Squad.

Phantom Squad previously targeted the Steam network and a number of servers for popular games, including Star Wars, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 and Grand Theft Auto 5.

On December 24th, Phantom Squad started the announced attack, a severe DDoS attack hit the EA’s servers taking them down for the last three hours. The company confirmed the attack through the official Twitter account.

Apologies for the inconvenience. We’re working hard to resolve log in and connection issues which are currently affecting many game titles.

— EA Support (@AskEASupport) 24 Dicembre 2015

After the EA publicly disclosed the attacks, Phantom Squad stopped the attack and announced via their Twitter new attacks on the PlayStation Network.

After the PhantomSquad tweets, several users started reporting problems with PSN.

On December 24, 23:30, the PlayStation Network starts suffering the attack, the official EA’s website published the following warning message:

“Affected Platforms: PS4

Affected Services: You may have some difficulty launching games, applications, or online features. Our engineers are working to resolve the issue as soon as possible, and we thank you for your patience.”

I have installed my new Play Station 4 and I noticed several authentication errors while I was trying to access the Sony network.

According to the experts, something caused a temporary outage to the PlayStation Network, while its websites were not affected by downtimes. Is it the Phantom Squad attack? Is it a simple congestion caused by the huge traffic that reached the network in these days?

The Phantom Squad announced that a former LizardSquad member @RootedExploit will join to the attack, but confirmed that still haven’t targeted the SonyPlaystation network.

“We haven’t shut servers off yet because we are busy, we have family just like you guys do. Be patient!!!” they Tweeted.

Stay Tuned!

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Play Station Network, DDoS)